Gospel: Matthew 13: 24-30
Those who revel in filling the coffers of hell with people find a rebuke from Jesus in today's Gospel portion. How many good people are turned off by the incessant condemnations, how much good wheat gets pulled up by the overzealous judging of the rigid. How quickly too they forget that in the human realm weeds can become wheat through metanoia and conversion, something that does not occur with appeals to fear and ruin.
What is more, those involved in agriculture are ever creative and recycle nearly everything. Farmers know that the burning of the weeds is not the end of the story bur rather a continuation. For the ashes of the burned weeds are returned to the soil as fertilizer. They increase pH levels and improve crop success and yields. Farmers are always finding new ways to increase yields, not reduce them as our condemnation crowd would do.
Today's Gospel is about the ingenuity of God: the patience, creativity, and resourcefulness to find ever new ways of increasing the population of the vineyard, not in reducing it. Today is a day for us to reflect on how we might be called to find ever new ways to attract people to mission and ministry of the Lord, on ways to increase our patience and other virtues needed to work with others in an ever diverse world.
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